Ticket To Ride, Chapter 14: People are fucking beautiful…

My mind was a mess as the previous week had ended with a piece of unwanted wisdom. After seven half-assed hours of sleep from midnight in Paris to the Spanish border, a German, “Hein” (name given), went off to find the nearest market to get some bread and cheese. He said a bit of wine would be good for the cold that I hadn’t been able to shake since Paris. Having reluctantly allowed him to share the train compartment (second-class, no bed), I had decided that my earlier suspicion (train robber) of him was most likely unfounded since I had slept most of the distance thus far traveled and nothing material was missing. He’s all right, I thought, having also played a few hands of Gin with him.

Hein returned with a crumpled paper bag which resembled his slept-in clothing. Our nine o’clock for Madrid departed.

In his brief search he’d located two bottles of cabernet and a package of vanilla wafers. Before reboarding the train, he pulled a syringe from his coat pocket and emptied it through the cork and into the wine. I had resigned myself to strict frugality until my arrival in Madrid, so I was happy to oblige his offer to share this paupers’ feast. I rubbed my red eyes as he passed the bottle.

“Here’s to gin rummy,” I said.

“Gin rummy,” he replied smiling.

We drank from tin camping cups and drifted through the Pyrenees and the Basque countryside.

My eyelids were too-soon heavy and I declined another hand of Gin.

Stretching out on the scuffed and stained, avocado-green bench, with my arm through the straps of my rucksack and my money belt beneath me, seeing snow-capped mountains passing slowly by, and thinking free thoughts, I fell, into a well, of sedated sleep.

… in nightmarish nocturnality

a thieving Arab rushed in dreams

seeking…

I awoke again, my eyes burning as the sun threw its last spark. The railbrakes screeched as the train slowed into Chamartain station. All thumbs, I attempted to organize my pack and my self. Untied laces… unzipped zippers… a missing money belt… camera… passport… travelers checks… all gone… vanished with the fork-tongued German. I tore the crucifix from my neck… Christian, existential, Christianexistential, bodhisattva?

Under the hazy luminescence of the overhead lamp sat an unopened bottle of cabernet. I picked it up and left the train in search of further sleep, still feeling the effects of an unknown drug; sweet, hushed, narcotic night.

I dragged my gear to a nearby hostel and slept another eight hours (a total of twenty-four in the past thirty-six). I felt cold and hollowed out and hungry and longed for the warmth of a woman.